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SUNDAY ESSAY by AJITH SAMARANAYAKE

Delivering the keynote address at this year's Gratiaen prize award ceremony Prof. Senake Bandaranayake engaged in a sweeping survey of the intellectual landscape of the post-Independence era. Taking the Peradeniya University which was the intellectual cradle of much of that time as his centrepiece he posited the theory that the generation of the 1940's and 1950's was the first generation of modern intellectuals in Sri Lanka.

In his own words, 'What I mean by this is that this was the first time Sri Lanka produced an entire body, an entire generational group of modern intellectuals, in substantial quantities, who were both entirely and distinctively Sri Lankan and, at the same time, in full possession of varied aspects of modern knowledge and contemporary culture, at its highest levels.'

Coming to his own generation which he sees as that of the 1960's and 1970's he detects in it a replication of and expansion over the previous generation. He says that this generation certainly built on and broadened and he hopes, deepened the work of their predecessors.

Prof. Bandaranayake however, cuts short his intellectual exploration at this point saying that it is 'much too early, too close up to assess or discuss except imperfectly' what he calls the imaginative topography of the creative work and intellectual product of this third generation. While this is true it is also unfortunate and even an abdication of the task which Prof. Bandaranayake has set himself because the function and the condition of this generation of the contemporary intelligentsia are central to the multiple crises of our time.

For good or for ill it is this generation which will determine the contours of the kind of Sri Lankan society which will emerge in this country. The generation of the 1940 and the 1950's which Bandaranayake describes as a first generation of modern intellectuals is that generation and class which succeeded the colonial intelligentsia in the immediate post-Independence period. They were the products of the University College, the Colombo University and the University of Peradeniya who succeeded the British in the then still existing Civil Service and within the university.

The relative independence from the political executive which the administration enjoyed in these early days of independence and the self-confidence which this class of administrators possessed made it possible for them to function without the political pressures which were brought to bear during a later period on the administration in a context of increased politicisation of all branches of society.

Within the university itself the emphasis was on the classics and literature both western and oriental. Bandaranayake has noted the predominant influence exerted by what he calls the Ludowyk-Leavis-Scrutiny New Criticism presided over by Prof. E.F.C. Ludowyk, Professor of English of the Peradeniya University.

At a time when classical culture was identified with English literature the Leavis-Ludowyk School functioned as the arbiters of good taste and set the standards of literary and aesthetic criticism both within the university as well as the larger literate public through the literary journalists of the time who were themselves products of this school.

This was extended into the sphere of modern Sinhala critical writing by Prof. Sarachchandra, Ludowyk's Peradeniya colleague and collaborator in the theatre, who brought the critical standards of Leavis and I.A. Richards to bear on the emergent Sinhala literature, poetry and drama.

This then was an intelligentsia heavily conditioned by western classical culture and English literature which was the final standard of taste as far as it was concerned. This kind of outlook was in consonance with the leisurely politics and the genteel cultural taste of the 1950's and the early 1960's that golden and lazy afternoon spent in the warm aftermath of the Korean Boom but by the late 1950's and the 1960's disjunctions and dissonances had begun to appear.

This is why one is made rather sceptical by Prof. Bandaranayake's claim that this first generation of modern intellectuals were entirely and distinctively Sri Lankan because although they were a modern intelligentsia in the sense that they were conditioned by the humanities and liberal classical culture they were more cosmopolitan than 'distinctively Sri Lankan' in their tastes and sensibility.

By Sri Lankan, Bandaranayake no doubt meant that this intelligentsia was essentially a post-colonial class intent on questioning the colonial intellectual baggage of its inheritance at a time when western colonialism itself was being discredited and was on the retreat in Asia and Africa. He also no doubt meant that this was also a generation either produced by Free Education or immediately before it and produced by Sri Lankan universities rather than the western academies.

No doubt, all these factors gave them a Sri Lankan outlook but how far were they distinctively Sri Lankan? To the extent that they were bi-lingual with English as their dominant language (this was a time when even Sinhala was being taught at university level through the medium of English) with a heavy bias towards the classics rather than science and technology they were a cosmopolitan, even a hybrid, class at odds with the larger Sinhala or Tamil educated masses.

It can, of course, be claimed that the reaction to what was perceived as the alienation of this intelligentsia led to a warped and regressive attempt to correct this distortion. This manifested itself in the form of a distorted nationalism which sought to idealise even the backward features of the native ethos at the expense of everything western even when it was progressive and forward-looking.

In his essay titled 'The Alienation of the Modern Intellectual' appearing in pamphlet number four of 'Community' Ralph Pieris cites as an example submissions made to the Ceylon University Commission in the late 1950's that 'the atmosphere of the University was alien and hostile to the traditions of the country.' he continues: "But although the Commissioners pressed those giving oral evidence to specify aspects of University life that were repugnant to them and state what they desired to have instead, their answers were not helpful.

The specific objection related to ball-room dancing, table conventions and the practice of ragging. The desiderata were traditional games and a 'specifically Ceylonese atmosphere in ceremonial functions.' (Report of the Ceylon University Commission - Sessional Paper 23-1959).

The high point of this agitation was, of course, the enactment of the Sinhala Only Act which made it mandatory for the work of the administration to be carried out only in Sinhala which was designated the official language. Given the fact that upto then the work of the administration was carried out in English, a language known only to a minuscule minority, this was a progressive step which brought the administration closer to the people but it also fostered the myth that a knowledge of English was no longer necessary for advancement in life.

The teaching of English was neglected in schools which led to the creation of a new mono-lingual generation knowing Sinhala or Tamil only, that generation which Bandaranayake says it is too early to assess. But it precisely the mono-lingual nature of this generation, the fact of their being cut off from the vast body of knowledge available in English and consequently the narrowness of their outlook which have been so debilitating of the intellectual tradition of our times.

This is also the reason why on Bandaranayake's own admission the universities are no longer the epicentres of intellectual activity. Once the two generations of the 1940-50's and 1960-70's leave the academy only will the true measure of this impoverishment be felt.

Can a mono-lingual generation, however creative or rooted they might be in the soil match the broad intellectual sympathies of their predecessors? However, much they might be exposed to a foreign environment through scholarships or study abroad can they imbibe the intellectual spirit of the preceding generation without a thorough immersion in western classical or high culture available only through the knowledge of another language?

Whether they are churned out by the universities or the secondary schools or are only just drop-outs from the system this mono-lingual generation forms the broad swathe of contemporary youth. They are reared either on lecture notes, translations from the English or the current popular culture.

This is why when Prof. Bandaranayake strikes an elegiac note to the first-ever modern intelligentsia of the 1940's-1950's one senses a vast gulf between them and the present, a sense of vast intellectual spaces left unexplored, a near breakdown of communications between generations, a great sense of emptiness.

Today at the beginning of a new century there is practically nothing in common with the cultured voice emerging from the Barefoot Gallery and the hub-bub outside which is why this year's keynote address at the Gratiaen Prize established by an illustrious expatriate Sri Lankan writer to commemorate an illustrious Burgher judge and near kinsman was a lament to an intelligentsia already forsaken by history.

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